


greater wars would come

by hardboiledmeggs



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Family Issues, Michael Carter Lives, POV Alternating, Vignettes, and baggage, headcanon dump, inherited trauma, the Carter legacy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-16 22:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7287202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardboiledmeggs/pseuds/hardboiledmeggs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy and Sharon Carter through the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1939

**Author's Note:**

> Blame sevenfoxes.

_This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity._

_-Wilfred Owen_

 

 

* * *

 

_**1939** _

 

 

“Of course I'm going, sport,” Michael says, smiling at her, charming and easy. “Have to do my part. There’s a legacy, you know. Grandfather fought the Boers and father fought the Boche, and now I’m off to fight, well, the Boche again.”

 

Something wet and heavy catches in Peggy’s throat. Tears sting the backs of her eyes. She’d been born after the last war. She hadn’t known what their father was like before it, but she knows what he's like now, with his breathing problems and his unpredictable rage and his trench knife tucked under his pillow at night.

 

Michael sees the tears stuck, trembling, on her eyelashes, and tugs her against his chest, folding his arms around her shoulders.

 

“It’s not all that bad, is it?” he says, and his voice is still light and carefree.

 

“You’re leaving me,”

 

She stifles a sob against the brown wool of his service jacket. His buttons scratch her cheek.

 

“It’s what I have to do. What we all have to do. You ought to find your role too, sport, and I don’t just mean as a bloody typist.”

 

Peggy frowns. “What else is there?”

 

She’s taken a course on typing and he knows it. Her pride stings.

 

“There’ll be lots of things for ladies to do this time,” Michael says cryptically, and Peggy can already feel him pulling away from her. She can see that he knows things he can’t – or won’t – tell her. “You’ll see,” he says, stroking her hair.

 

She knows she’ll lose him, one way or another. Even if he comes back, he won’t be the same. He looks at her now with such a willful cheerfulness; it makes her gorge rise. Peggy clenches her fists.

 

“I’m off at the end of the week. You’ll come and say good-bye, won’t you? You know I haven’t got a girl, but I’d still like to get a tearful female farewell.” He laughs and chucks her under the chin. Peggy punches his arm.

 

A week later, she says goodbye to him on a crowded train platform. She doesn’t cry.

 


	2. 2002

 

_**2002** _

 

 

The Mustang is candy-apple red. Its paint practically glows in the bright sunlight. For a long series of moments, all Sharon can do is stare at it in disbelief.

 

“My mom said no,” she says after a while, shaking her head slightly.

 

“Hm,” Peggy hums behind her. “But I’m not your mother.”

 

Sharon can hardly argue with that. Peggy is fire and her parents are ice. It’s what drew her to her great-aunt in the first place. And now, Peggy is looking at her with a wide grin and expectation in her eyes.

 

But there’s a feeling of dread – dull, heavy, sickening – that grows in the pit of Sharon’s stomach. _This is going to be bad_ , she thinks.

 

“I can’t—“ she starts, but Peggy takes her by the shoulders.

 

“You’re _seventeen_ ,” she says, rubbing Sharon’s arms, “You deserve a little excitement.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Sharon looks back at the car, thinking of how many things – tangible and intangible – Peggy has given her that her parents haven’t approved of.

 

“Besides,” Peggy continues, moving to wrap her arm around Sharon’s waist, “I haven’t got any grandchildren to spoil, so you get the lot of it.”

 

Sharon chews her lower lip and avoids Peggy’s eyes. She thinks of the things her father has told her in anger – why both of Peggy’s children chose not to have children of their own, why Sharon’s own father was resolved to only have one child. He’d told her about Peggy, and about his own father, and what it had been like to be their children. “They broke us,” he’d said, with tears in his eyes, and Sharon had cried, too.

 

“Come on,” Peggy whispers, low and conspiratorial, and holds up a set of keys. Sharon turns to her, and for the first time, she sees _through_ her. She sees Peggy’s desperation and loneliness and _wanting_. “Let’s at least take it for a drive.”

 

A tension bubbles up in Sharon’s throat – she isn’t sure if she wants to sob or scream. She has spent so much time balanced between people she loves. Her head aches and swims. She feels unspeakably tired.

 

She nods slowly, at last, and gives in, because it’s simpler than fighting.

 

“Okay, Aunt Peggy.”


	3. 1945

**_1945_ **

****

 

Peggy stays in the control room for a long time after the radio goes dead. She leans forward in her seat and covers her face with her hands. _It’s only been two hours,_ she thinks. Only two hours since she last saw Steve, since she kissed him in that final, desperate moment. In that tiny window of time, nothing has really changed – she hasn’t washed or slept or even used the toilet. Now, she thinks, everything she does, no matter how routine, will be _the first time since Steve—_

The next time she brushes her teeth, she’ll be rinsing the taste of him out of her mouth. The next time she washes her clothes, she’ll wash away the noxious scent of the exhaust that had engulfed them as Steve jumped onto the aircraft and away from her. The next time she cuts her hair, or trims her nails, or even scrubs her skin too roughly, she’ll lose precious atoms and molecules that had been in his presence.

 

She will change, inevitably. But he never will, not now.

 

Colonel Phillips approaches her from behind and places a heavy hand on her shoulder. Peggy braces herself. She knows what kinds of useless things people say in the face of loss, and she can’t bear to hear platitudes this soon.

 

He takes a deep breath and then, in a thick, gravelly voice, “Well, shit.”

 

Surprised, Peggy turns in her seat to look up at him. His face is worn and tired. In the low light, Peggy thinks she can see traces of dampness in the wrinkles around his eyes.

 

“He loved you. You know that.”

 

Phillips looks at her squarely, with his usual sort of fierce intensity.

 

“We weren’t—“ she starts weakly, but can’t bring herself to finish. Fending off accusations doesn’t matter any more. There are no Army regulations left to violate.

 

“You were,” he insists. “Never bullshit me, Carter.”

 

She nods, feeling empty, like her insides have been scooped out.

 

Phillips pulls back his hand and crosses his arms. “We’ve all lost soldiers,” he says, and some of the gruffness comes back into his voice, “But the job’s not done. What are you going to do now?”

 

She gapes at him for a moment. Red-hot outrage swells in her chest. The idea that he could rush her along, out of this room, on to the next thing, so quickly makes her want to sink her fingernails into his flesh, makes her want to grab the pistol out of the holster strapped to her thigh, makes her want to hit him until her knuckles bleed.

 

But then she thinks of Steve, and what the job – the war – had meant to him. She thinks of the rest of HYDRA, the rest of Hitler’s armies, still spread through Europe like a cancer.

 

Peggy looks up at him, and lets a bit of the violence inside her come out.

 

“I’m going to finish it.”


	4. 2010

**_2010_ **

 

****

Sharon finds her on the floor, caught between a doorjamb and the walker she only uses when no one is around. The sight of it turns her insides to ice.

 

“Jesus, Aunt Peggy,” she gasps, kneeling down and checking for any obvious sign of injury.

 

“Just help me up,” Peggy hisses, holding out her hand.

 

“Are you sure? I should call…I should call somebody.”

 

Sharon’s certain that Peggy won’t consent to an ambulance, but she wonders how quickly she could get her GP on the line.

 

“You’ll do no such thing,”

 

Sharon heaves a sigh. “Fine. Come on.”

 

She wraps her arms around Peggy’s waist and lifts; she feels light and fragile. There’s something terrifying that comes with touching Peggy now, with feeling how her body has changed. Gingerly, Peggy shuffles to a chair and sits. Sharon kneels next to her.

 

“I’m sorry to pull you away,” Peggy says, tapping her fingernail on the laminated SHIELD nametag clipped to Sharon’s jacket lapel.

 

“It’s okay,” Sharon tells her, “I have time.”

 

A half-hour earlier, she’d gotten the call from Peggy’s cell phone asking her to come. Sharon had thanked god that she’d convinced Peggy to carry a phone in her pocket, and had left immediately, fighting through Beltway traffic to get to the apartment Peggy still keeps outside DC.

 

Peggy frowns. “No, you don’t. _I_ never did. You _make_ time. You’re good at that; I never was,” and then, bitterly and quietly, almost under her breath, “Just ask your aunt and uncle.”

 

Sharon knows that’s impossible. Peggy’s children scattered to the wind long ago. She wonders if Peggy even has their phone numbers, or if they have hers.

 

“I’m going to die,” she says, matter-of-factly and Sharon cringes. It’s taken her a while to get used to the way Peggy pulls subjects out of thin air. It’s been a jarring, recent development. “I want you to speak for me. At my funeral. I know no one else will do it.”

 

“That’s not—There are people who would, Aunt Peggy, you know that.”

 

“Well,” she reaches out to take Sharon’s hand, and Sharon tries not to pull away. “I wouldn’t trust any of them. You know what I like. You’ll get it right.”

 

“I don’t…” Sharon starts and hesitates. She thinks of her parents, who’d practically disowned her when she’d followed Peggy’s advice and joined SHIELD. She thinks of her string of failed relationships with uninteresting men, and of how hard it is for her to understand love, and of her broken fingernails and jawline acne and the time in high school when she should have kissed Antoine Triplett and didn’t. “I don’t always get it right.”

 

Peggy huffs. “I’m not wrong. I’ve known you since you were in nappies. I’ve seen how you are. You watch, and you listen, and you know just what to do. Every time.”

 

Peggy’s skin is cold against Sharon’s; lack of circulation has turned her fingers slightly blue. Sharon pulls her hand away and tucks her hair behind her ears.

 

“Okay,” she says, looking down, and then, “Do you want me to stay?”

 

Peggy shakes her head. “Go. You’ve got work to do.”


	5. 1948-2011

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is inspired by the tentative spoilers that came out for season three of Agent Carter, wherein Michael Carter was (probably) meant to return and be the season's antagonist. I expect this would have given Peggy her own Winter Soldier-esque storyline, but that's just me.

**_1948 - 2011_ **

****

 

Michael Carter comes back to his sister in 1948.

 

Peggy finds him and fights him, breaks through years of HYDRA programming and reprogramming to pull him back to her. The damage that’s been done to him - what happened when he got too far behind enemy lines - seems almost like too much, considering that only a handful of years have passed. But he comes back to her, first only in little bits, and then in a grand rush of remembering and rehabilitation.

 

With Michael by her side – and Howard and Colonel Phillips and Daniel – she feels strong and _repaired_. From the post-war, bureaucratic ashes of the SSR, they forge something new: an agency to do justice to what they – and Steve – had fought for.

 

Daniel brings out something new in her – something that might have always existed inside her, obscured by the fog of war. She softens and lets herself marry and become a mother, twice, even if she has no real maternal instinct. She loves her family fiercely: husband and children, the woman Michael eventually marries and their son. But in the end, the mission is all that matters, and when Peggy pulls away, it feels inevitable.

 

She becomes insular. Secret. She poisons her own hope for happiness by wondering too much about what might have been. She separates from Daniel, and then reconciles, again and again until finally, when their children are grown, they divorce.

 

And then they begin to die, one by one. Phillips. Daniel. Howard. Ana. Jarvis. Angie.

 

And time passes and passes, and things change too much and too little.

 

And then.


	6. 2012

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic/series of ficlets was very much inspired by the second season of _Transparent_ , so that ought to get some credit. A major writing song for this story, and especially starting at this chapter, can be heard [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KQdMgLW-K0)

**_2012_ **

****

Steve Rogers comes back to the world in 2012.

 

Sharon spends a year pretending it didn’t happen. She goes out of her way to ignore news articles and magazine cover stories and internet memes about him. And then the disaster in New York happens, and his face becomes unavoidable. The _Avengers_ permeate every media outlet to an obnoxious degree. Sharon tries not to think about it, about him. It isn’t that she doesn’t like him, or that she does – she isn’t sure how she feels, how the idea of him makes her feel, and she’s content to let her own feelings remain a mystery, even to her.

 

And then Steve Rogers joins SHIELD. And then Nick Fury – who is one of the handful of people in Sharon’s world who know about her family – calls her into his office and tells her that he’s assigning her to Rogers’ personal security detail. SHIELD agents disguised as movers put boxes of kitchen utensils and surveillance equipment into the apartment next to Steve's. For over a year, Sharon lives out of two suitcases and barely listens to the surveillance tapes. She keeps a log of his comings and goings. She knows that he visits Peggy, and she times her own visits carefully, making sure there's no sign of her among Peggy's bedside mementos.

 

Sharon tries not to talk to him, just gives him polite looks as they pass in the hall. She knows that Natasha is monitoring him more closely, more personally. Becoming his friend isn't part of her mission.

 

The first time she speaks to him is late one evening, when she comes out of her apartment with a basket of laundry - her usual excuse - to see him just coming to the top of the stairs and rounding the corner towards her. His face is half bruise, his right eye is nearly swollen shut; a cut across his brow is held together with butterfly bandages.

 

“Yikes,” she says before she can catch herself. When he turns to look at her, surprised, she blusters through another few words. “That…that looks like it hurt.”

 

“Yeah, it’s…” he gestures to his face, then towards her. “You…you’re a nurse, right? I’ve seen you in your scrubs.”

 

Sharon nods and shrugs. She’s made a career of lying, but lying to him feels unnatural, so she tries to avoid it.

 

“I guess you notice that stuff,” he says, looking like he feels as uncomfortable as she does.

 

“What?”

 

“Just…people.”

 

His faces flushes pink. Sharon’s brow furrows; she feels like they’re talking in two different conversations. Steve ducks his head, then reaches across the space between them and holds out his hand.

 

“I’m Steve,” he says, and then, “Or maybe you…Do you know who I am?”

 

“That’s quite a question,” Sharon says, shaking his hand as quickly as she can, but not quickly enough.

 

There’s something in him that she recognizes. When their hands touch, she feels a tug behind her sternum, as though the history in her heart were acknowledging the history in his.

 

He winces and shakes his head apologetically. “Sometimes people recognize me. It’s just…it’s something that happens. Sometimes. I’m sorry.”

 

“Hm,” she nods, putting an unreadable smile on her face and opening the door to her apartment behind her. 

 

For a moment, Steve looks like he wants to say something else, to stop her, to keep her with him for just a little longer. There’s something strange in his expression – in his creased brow and frown. If only for the sake of her cover, Sharon wants so badly to believe that he didn’t feel what she did. She wonders if it’s possible for what’s inside her – whatever that is – to call out to him, and for him to hear it.

 

“Nice to meet you,” she says, cold and polite, as she disappears behind her door.

 

That night, Sharon dreams of Peggy and Steve, of her father and grandfather. They are, together, ghosts. Even her. And together they are loud and silent, empty and whole, past and present. In her dream, Peggy holds her hand, and her skin is paper-thin and cold. Steve touches her face, and his hand is solid and warm. And when Sharon wakes up, there are tears on her face.


End file.
